Facebook Teams Up With Unity To Create a Gaming Platform To Rival Steam (betanews.com)

Facebook is now shifting its attention back to capturing the gaming market. The company said Thursday that it's working with game engine Unity to build a dedicated, downloadable desktop gaming platform. The social juggernaut added that it is also broadening the Facebook.com experience for gamers. BetaNews reports: Facebook is starting to take gaming far more seriously. Not content with funneling the likes of Candy Crush through its servers, the social network is now joining forces with the company behind the Unity game engine to create its own desktop gaming platform. The aim is to tap into not only the millions of gamers that are already on Facebook, but also to gather more from the PC-gaming community. It's a new venture that very clearly treads on the toes of Steam, and is likely to cause ripples in the gaming world. The scope of the work between Facebook and Unity Technologies is quite wide. It will bring together Unity's 2D, 3D, VR and AR development platform with Facebook's own game development tools. While Facebook is currently associated with very casual gaming, hooking up with an established serious player in the field means we're likely to see the social network appealing more to hardcore gamers.

Comments

Finally!

[The-Ixian]

Farmville on every platform!

Oh like last time?

[Atrox666]

Like when Facebook had games and eventually took over all the ad space the developers had to finance their games?
Like when they suddenly banned all their developers from billing their own customers?
Like when they were giving away facebook credits and making developers pick up the tab?

For some reason I think I'll give this a big ol' pass.
You'd have to be pretty dumb at this point to think Facebook wouldn't steal all the profit.

Hmm, Oculus store?

[Anonymous Coward]

Besides the fact that Unity is going to join up with them, isn't this already available now? Personally, I still use GOG whenever possible as they have my respect for not crippling games with DRM.

Oops.

[fishscene]

Unity seemed alright until this. The very last thing I want in the digital world is Facebook anything. Just replace "Facebook" with "spyware/adware" and you have a much clearer picture of what it actually is.

Re:Oops.

[guises]

Ugh, I'm blowing mods to post this but it has to be known more broadly: Unity is already spyware and has been for a while. Analytics is integrated into the editor, and while it used to be opt-out ever since Unity 5.0 it's been impossible for free users to disable. (Pro users still? have that option) Additionally, any games that you make with Unity also spy on your customers, even if you don't include Unity analytics or Unity ads. Naturally, if you do include those things your games will collect even more information, and Unity will graciously share some of that information with you, but it's not possible to make a spyware-free game with Unity.

In that respect, this seems like a savvy pairing between companies.

Re:... a sales platform to rival Steam.

[yuriklastalov]

Why should they bother? They've got this golden goose that makes them boat loads of cash and they have to do literally nothing to rake it all in. Have you ever looked at the failed abortion that is Greenlight? They don't give even the tiniest fuck that it's filled to the brim with absolute shit and that the shit is leaking into the main catalog.

Still, even with as much as Steam and Valve suck, a FB run gaming platform will be worse. I suppose it'd be curated, at the very least. But FB hates its users and will kick them in the teeth in every way they can and the users will keep coming back for more.

Oculus Studios

[spire3661]

I just want to point out that Facebook does have a 'real' game studio now with published titles and many more in the pipeline. Further they have John Carmack and Abrash in-house. Love or hate Facebook, they now have to tools to make some extraordinary moves in gaming. We are way beyond Farmville here. This is a big announcement.

Re:... a sales platform to rival Steam.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

If nothing else, at least Steam doesn't start with the giant pile of user data to enthusiastically tie to whatever abortion of a 'gaming platform' they end up rolling out.

Steam has certainly made strong attempts to add 'social' to the basic buying-games process; but it remains an afterthought. Facebook is likely to make it so exciting and mandatory that it'll make Google's attempt to ram 'plus' down the throat of every user of anything remotely connected to them look like a gentle suggestion.

It's bad enough that I have to deal with Origin

[jeffmflanagan]

There's value in having all your games on a single distribution platform, and I'm already annoyed by having to put up with Origin and UPlay. Adding another crappy little distribution platform is not going to help anyone but maybe Facebook.

Re:... a sales platform to rival Steam.

[zlives]

please don't insult garbage as it can be useful. Origin is probably more like a disease infected lethally radioactive anal probe. I am sure more apt analogies can be made.